September 27, 2012

Fareed Zakaria is back, back to kick Romney in the mouth, back from exile, presumably now purged of his plagiarism sins. Let's see how eloquent his eloquence critique is:

As President Obama has surged in the polls, Republicans have been quick to identify the problem: Mitt Romney. Peggy Noonan eloquently voiced what many conservatives believe when she said that Romney’s campaign has been a “rolling calamity.” Others have been equally critical of his candidacy. And yet, shouldn’t it puzzle us that Romney is so “incompetent” (also from Noonan), given his deserved reputation for, well, competence? He founded one of this country’s most successful financial firms, turned around the flailing Salt Lake City Olympics and was a successful governor. How did he get so clumsy so fast?

Rasmussen has the candidates locked in a tie. They're 46/46 again today, same as yesterday, and pretty much the same for the past week. But if you want to find Obama surging, there are polls to satisfy your urge for the surge. These polls are grotesquely oversampling Democrats, to the point where the joke has become obvious, but maybe you can find your pleasure there, if you're also the sort that listens to Peggy Noonan as the exemplar of what conservatives are thinking. She eloquently voiced the opinion you want to hear: Romney’s campaign has been a “rolling calamity.”

If you bother to keep reading — and it's likely both Obama fans and Romney fans stopped at "rolling calamity," either pleased or disgusted — you'll see many paragraphs asserting that Romney doesn't want to talk about taxes and illegal immigration. He's "tongue-tied" because there's "a new kind of political correctness" in the GOP:

They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden.... As a result, he has twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously... That’s a straitjacket that even Peggy Noonan’s eloquence cannot get him out of.

I'm picturing Peggy using her tongue to untwist a pretzel. Or is she unbuckling a straitjacket? Marvelous writing, Fareed. Did you make that all up yourself?

181 comments:

If the polls are tied with such a gross oversampling of democrats, especially in light of the fact there are now more registered republicans than democrats Obama will lose big. Romney should now get tough and nasty and go hammer and tong against all democrats and start pushing the voters to vote a straight republican ticket; from the white house to the governor's mansion to the mayor's office. From congress to the state legislatures to the city councils. His mantra should be they all have to go.

I'm listening to Romney on pretty independent media formats, Althouse, and I'm frustrated as hell by his odd rhetorical style. I'm not hostile to Romney, and I want to be convinced he's up to being President.

I won't comment on the polls because I can't make sense of that. I'll believe the election results.

Romney's competence as an executive is a given. But, he sure doesn't have a particularly folksy or effective oratorical style. He circles and restates and doubles back until he just leaves me in the dust.

In two weeks the polls will become more reflective of reality if the pollsters wish to retain some semblance of credibility. They have always been hacks in the past but this time they are so transparent it's risible.

ST I could never stand to listen to W's speeches either. We don't need grand oratory, just competence applied to a coherent and pro American policy. I would rather have another eight years of Bush (either one) than eight more weeks of Zero.

As Jon Stewart pointed out by playing back to back comments Romney has made as he flips from claiming the ER is socialism that doesn't make sense, to claiming we provide care for the poor without health insurance through ERs, and on it goes, Romney is not tongue-tied just willing to say anything to anybody depending to whom he is speaking.

I usually hang up on pollsters but a few weeks ago I stayed on the line to listen to the automated questions. The woman asked me to push 1 if I supported Barack Obama and 2 if I supported Mitt Romney. I said nothing and pushed nothing. Then she said "So would you say that you would strongly support Barack Obama or are leaning to Barack Obama?" Gobsmacked, I hung up. I've heard people speculating that this poll was registering hang-ups as support for Obama. The next time it happened, I waited after the second question about strongly supporting Obama, still pushing nothing and saying nothing and she followed with "So would you say that you would strongly support Mitt Romney, etc...". So I'm not inclined to think it's anything nefarious although even if it's an innocent glitch, it may still be registering early hang-ups as support for Obama.

So the next automated poll I got (last night), I decided I better start playing ball and I answered all the questions. First time ever.

"oddly enough"?? Bush had good speechwriters and when he was speaking off the cuff, he sounded pretty much like a regular guy. O, on the other hand, the guy lauded for his oratorical skills and eloquence, sounds like a snotty prick. He sounds so solidly like that that I don't think it is going out on a limb to say that he IS a snotty prick.

I want Gary Johnson but since he'll never win, I will vote for Romney. I want Romney's votes to bury the snotty prick.

Obama speaks well when reading from a Teleprompter. When he goes off it, not so much. He has so many verbal pauses that he comes close to making W sound articulate. He also says things that come back to bite him, like "the middle class is doing fine" and "you didn't build that."

I've often wondered who writes Obama's Teleprompter scripts. That's the person who is really running the country.

As for the oration/eloquence question: meh. Romney's fine. He's not a great orator, but then, I don't think Obama is very good either. Certainly not as good as he's made out to be.

And I don't see the problem being Romney's flip-flopping either. Plenty of politicians flip-flop and you can find all sorts of damning quotes from Obama prior to 2008 that are at least as bad as what Romney's getting flak for.

So I don't care if Romney is new to conservative principles as long as he can articulate them and defend the, on the fly, and to a hostile audience. To the extent that he's doing that now it's apologetically and with not very much vigor. He may want every man to be his friend and that's great but he better acknowledge that he's got a lot of enemies and he better start engaging them.

I think Christy would've been the wrong choice for either president or vice president but boy is he an orator.

I stopped reading Peggy Noonan when she badmouthed Sarah Palin in 2008. It seems to me that a lot of so called conservatives are more concerned with their careers and being like by their liberal friends than their concern for the good of our country. And I would include some of those conservatives who provide analysis on Fox news. I think the more they want to be liked the more they tend to "grow". An other example is Joe Scarborough.

"Romney is not a conservative Republican. The source of his tongue-tied oratory is undoubtedly that he's trying to appeal to a Republican base that is far more conservative then he is.

Romney is the author of Romneycare. He was governor of the most liberal state in the union. He's a big government Republican. You could call him a RINO."

You can't expect to get elected in a liberal state by showing yourself to be a true hard core conservative. And in a liberal state if you are elected then you have to work with mostly liberals to get anything done so I think or at least I'm hoping that Romney will turn out to be more conservative than most people believe.

This should have been Romney acceptance speech. Only a few words needed to be changed.

Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.

The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership --i n the White House and in Congress -- for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.

My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation.

I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation's highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.

We need rebirth of the American tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. The United States of America is unique in world history because it has a genius for leaders -- many leaders -- on many levels. But, back in 1976, Mr. Carter said, "Trust me." And a lot of people did. Now, many of those people are out of work. Many have seen their savings eaten away by inflation. Many others on fixed incomes, especially the elderly, have watched helplessly as the cruel tax of inflation wasted away their purchasing power. And, today, a great many who trusted Mr. Carter wonder if we can survive the Carter policies of national defense.

"Trust me" government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what's best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs--in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.

And I don't see the problem being Romney's flip-flopping either. Plenty of politicians flip-flop and you can find all sorts of damning quotes from Obama prior to 2008 that are at least as bad as what Romney's getting flak for.

Three hundred and sixty years ago, in 1620, a group of families dared to cross a mighty ocean to build a future for themselves in a new world. When they arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they formed what they called a "compact"; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws.

The single act--the voluntary binding together of free people to live under the law--set the pattern for what was to come.

A century and a half later, the descendants of those people pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their lives; none sacrificed honor.

Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln called upon the people of all America to renew their dedication and their commitment to a government of, for and by the people.

Isn't it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to them--for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?

Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a commitment to care for the needy; to teach our children the values and the virtues handed down to us by our families; to have the courage to defend those values and the willingness to sacrifice for them.

Let us pledge to restore, in our time, the American spirit of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative; a spirit that flows like a deep and mighty river through the history of our nation.

As your nominee, I pledge to restore to the federal government the capacity to do the people's work without dominating their lives. I pledge to you a government that will not only work well, but wisely; its ability to act tempered by prudence and its willingness to do good balanced by the knowledge that government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years."

If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. But, with the virtues that our legacy as a free people and with the vigilance that sustains liberty, we still have time to use our renewed compact to overcome the injuries that have been done to America these past three-and-a-half years.

First, we must overcome something the present administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one party deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It's an economic stew that has turned the national stomach.

Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. Those are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the government that it is all somehow their fault. We do not have inflation because -- as Mr. Carter says -- we have lived too well.

The head of a government which has utterly refused to live within its means and which has, in the last few days, told us that this year's deficit will be $60 billion, dares to point the finger of blame at business and labor, both of which have been engaged in a losing struggle just trying to stay even.

High taxes, we are told, are somehow good for us, as if, when government spends our money it isn't inflationary, but when we spend it, it is.

"[Romney] sure doesn't have a particularly folksy or effective oratorical style. He circles and restates and doubles back until he just leaves me in the dust."

The only reason I worry about Romney's oratorical skills is that they might affect his electability. But for my money, I'm not voting for an Orator in Chief. I'm going to vote for the guy I think might be willing and able to pull us back from the abyss.

I stopped reading Peggy Noonan when she badmouthed Sarah Palin in 2008. It seems to me that a lot of so called conservatives are more concerned with their careers and being like by their liberal friends than their concern for the good of our country. And I would include some of those conservatives who provide analysis on Fox news. I think the more they want to be liked the more they tend to "grow". An other example is Joe Scarborough.

Darrell - Spare us the Reagan spew. It's 30 years later and regurgitating old stuff is like Democrats still using old FDR boilerplate 30 years later in Watergate times.

Some of the cancer that has affected America traces back to Reagan, as much as it does to democrats. Voodoo economics.Deficits don't matter.Back the holy Mujahadeen Freedom-Lovers.K -Street corruption.NO rise in the standard of living of the median US worker since 1982, while wealth in the hands of the richest 1% has exploded.Free trade creates better and more US industries and US jobs.Tax cuts for the rich creates so many jobs by conservative Republican Dogma according to Saint Reagan ....

My go to guy when I want to know if the Republican establishment is crapping all over their own candidate is Mark McKinnon. This would be the same Mark McKinnon that said if Mitt Romney really made those comments about the 47% then he's toast.

Seeing that Romney is only toast in polls if you stack the poll with Democrats, ignore voter enthusiasm from 2010 and the projected 2012 from the GOP, and factor that 15% of Obama's 2008 voters cannot be located by Team Obama 2012, I think Mark McKinnon is really onto something. Or, he just might be high and therefore needs to out his dealer so we can share a seat on his flights.

Romney is not a "natural politician," but an organizer and administrator trying to make like a politician so that he can get into office and do some organizing and administrating.

(He is also an Eagle Scout, and not just an Eagle Scout, but a Mormon one. Of course he is awkward on the stump.)

Obama has stated that his job is not to actually do anything, but to inspire others to do the doing.

(What I hear is two Obamas: One with the "uplifting" official speeches off the teleprompter, and another - with quite a different accent - "inspiring" the crowd to charge City Hall. And there is never any actual action by him; that is always left to others.)

Is there really a campaign going on? We don't see or hear any of it in NYC. Maybe there's a cable channel that carries campaign speeches, whether of the tongue-tied eloquence or teleprompted smoothy variety, that these folks are talking about. Unless you're the sort of nut who looks for those channels, though, you're not going to see or hear it here.

When Peggy or Fareed or David B go on about how terrible Romney is, or how wonderful O is, those of us in deep blue country (I suppose the same is true for the residents of deep red country) have no way to judge who's right. So far, all the bus tours and TV ads and rallies have been aimed at odd places in fly-over country -- Ohio and Wisconsin and places like that. Lucky you. It also gives a new, deconstructed meaning to the concept of a 'national campaign' that hasn't been national in a long time.

Neither candidate is trying to 'rally the country' much, at least not this part of it. Perhaps that's a good thing, or maybe we've all just moved beyond the stage where a politician can do that anymore.

Maybe when the debates happen, those of us not in fly-over country will finally discovery what all this noise is about.

1. Standing up to Jesse Jackson and ending decades of Dem grovelling to race hustlers until Obama did the the 2nd act.

2. Ending 30 years of endless, insipid worship of JF Kennedy. Where devoted Democrats would base all arguments on who had the most JFK quotes , who was "most like JFK".Whole days of their Conventions were devoted to JFK, RFK tributes. Devotees had their own cassettes and VCRs of whole JFK speeches they could adore and even memorize on those cold winter nights..

I usually hang up on pollsters but a few weeks ago I stayed on the line to listen to the automated questions. The woman asked me to push 1 if I supported Barack Obama and 2 if I supported Mitt Romney. I said nothing and pushed nothing. Then she said "So would you say that you would strongly support Barack Obama or are leaning to Barack Obama?" Gobsmacked, I hung up. I've heard people speculating that this poll was registering hang-ups as support for Obama.

Until Republicans become intellectually honest, Darrell, and admit some of the economic disaster America is in traces to failed Reagan ideas as well as failed LBJ and Carter ideas.....America's decline will continue.

1. Dereg the Freedom Lovers of Wall Street. Who better to police things than the very bankers, CEOs, and financiers whose livelihoods depend on being honest brokers to the American people!

Nope. Tax increases under Clinton happened while more jobs were started than under Reagan. 12 years of tax cuts for the rich under Dubya-Obama created 0 jobs.

3. Saint Reagan said we should have open borders for trade, since Amuirrikans can "out produce, out compete anyone and get even better jobs and higher wages." Free trade would create so many new industries in America that companies would have to get rid of less profitable industries because there would be too many jobs chasing too few US workers under wonderful free trade policy, Saint Reagan said.

Nope!

Deficits don't matter. Tax cuts would grow the economy and force the government to give all the excess new wealth from a growing economy back to the States, or better, lead to even more tax cuts - Saint Reagan said as gospel truth.

Beautifully said and written. Plagiarism -- a combination of larceny and perjury, which our lower than bottom of the barrel press corps curiously finds forgivable if the thief's other views are in accepted order. As for Peggy, I find it disturbing that, like the president, she speaks in an assortment of made-up accents and funny voices. A talented writer at times, but a confusing person. Curtis Roberts

Cedardford: Do you know if Democrats have abandoned their deregulation desires?

I do think you are right that there are aspects to Republican orthodoxy that are quite inconsistent with a regulatory environment that can actually be effective without being too controlling and beneficient to the largest organizations. However, that is also the same virus that has infected Democrats.

Gee Cedarford, why don't you become intellectually honest. Does Roney have to "Back the holy Mujahadeen Freedom-Lovers" or repeat any of the mistakes of the past, for that matter? No. And with the Republican sweep coming in November, he'll have what he needs to make a fresh start.

By the end of the Reagan era, the federal deficit as a share of gross domestic product was falling, and rapidly -- from 6 percent in 1985 to 3 percent in 1989. As Reagan left office, the Democrat-controlled Congressional Budget Office projected that "deficits were on a path to fall to about one percent of GDP by 1993," without any action by future presidents.

Voodoo economics is what we are experiencing now with the Fed, with QEfinity there hasn't been any reason to trim the budget, there won't be, money is cheap.

Clinton lied at the DNC convention. Clinton was a supply sider regardless of the retoric. Arthur Laffer voted for him twice for that reason.

Employment is getting worse not better, go to an econ site and see the real numbers. The media won't tell us, find a chart on unemployment application revisions by NLB or GDP Qtr revisions or Qtr manufacturing revisions. The numbers are always revised to an exponentailly worse number. The media won't tell you, but they will spin the fraudulent official stats when they come out even when they are very very bad.

"But if you want to find Obama surging, there are polls to satisfy your urge for the surge. These polls are grotesquely oversampling Democrats . . . "

Professor, are you actually interested in having a real conversation about that? Because the oversampling Democrats argument is clearly bunk. To be clear, none of the polls are adjusting their numbers to increase the number of Democrats in the sample. They are reporting the number of people who identify as Democrats. So the question is should they be adjusting these numbers to reduce the number of Democrats. And the answer is obviously not.

The article you linked points out that in 2008, when Obama won, the percentage of Democrats was approximately the same as his vote total, Dem +7. And in 2004, when Bush won, the percentage was even, which was again similar to the votes for the candidates. The article argues that this means that the sample is oversampling Democrats, but the conclusion to draw is exactly the opposite. What the numbers show is that party affiliation and candidate preference are closely correlated. It follows that if you adjust your raw results to meet a predetermined party affiliation, you are essentially predetermining the results of your poll.

Now, all polls adjust for demographics (eg, gender, race, etc.). If these demographics are unrealistic, that could bias the polls. The problem is that the polls use a range of demographic assumptions and they all come to the same conclusion: Obama is leading and more peope are identifying as Democrats. So the only way you get to the conclusion of bias is to argue that the polls should be artificially adjusting to increase the number of Republicans, which is tantamount to artificially adjusting to increase Romney's numbers, as they are doing over on unskewedpolls.com.

Political Correctness is a euphemism for progressive corruption. If the Republicans want to distinguish themselves from their competing interests, then they need to speak plainly and on principles, and address causal issues. They need to address an audience of adults and not pander to people as if their were children with their inexperienced idealism and dreams of instant gratification.

As for journalists, they need to stop manipulating perception in order to realize their preferred reality. This effort is yet another cause of corruption in our society. It, in fact, increases the risk born by people, as the information upon which they plan their lives lacks integrity.

ERTA (Reagan's tax cut) measure cut all income tax rates by twenty-five percent, with a 5 percent cut coming that October, the next 10 percent in July 1982, and the final 10 percent in July 1983. The law also reduced the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent, indexed tax rates to offset the impact of inflation, and increased the tax exemption on estates and gifts. Conservatives have consistently argued that ERTA was a prime factor in the economic growth that prevailed throughout the 1980s.

There followed sixty straight months of economic growth, the longest uninterrupted period of expansion since the government began keeping such statistics in 1854. Nearly fifteen million new jobs were created -- a total of eighteen million by the time Reagan left office. Just under $20 trillion worth of goods and services, measured in actual dollars, were produced from 1982 to 1987. To give some notion of how much that is, by the end of 1987 America was producing about seven and a one-half times more every year than it produced in John Kennedy's last year as president.

The expansion was felt everywhere, as conservative economists had predicted, including in the government's own income. Total federal receipts in 1982 were $618 billion. Five years later, federal receipts were just over $1 trillion, an increase of $398 billion. More than enough, one would have thought, to satisfy all but the most eager advocate of the welfare state.

edutcher: The point is that neither 2004 nor 2008 are anomalies. In both cases, party affiliation as reported in election polls was closely correlated to candidate preference. So to complain that the polls are biased for Obama because they are oversampling Democrats is the same thing as saying they are biased toward Obama because they are picking up too many Obama voters. It's circular.

Brennan said...Cedardford: Do you know if Democrats have abandoned their deregulation desires?

I do think you are right that there are aspects to Republican orthodoxy that are quite inconsistent with a regulatory environment that can actually be effective without being too controlling and beneficient to the largest organizations. However, that is also the same virus that has infected Democrats.

===========I agree. Part of Clinton's "triangualtion" strategy was to co-opt Reagan ideas on dereg, free trade, the borderless economic system Reagan wanted then renamed "Globalization".

The goal was to give the bankers, CEOs, and financiers what they wanted so their bribe money flowed to Clinton like it did to Reagan-Bush I.

Clinton put up the same "I'm for sale!" sign the Republicans did, and concentration of wealth into the hands of the few continued.

Even if Clinton did raise taxes on the "jobs creators" as the time of his Presidency created more jobs than Reagan's time did.

While the failed tax cuts for the rich dogma resurrected after Clinton, has generated 0 net private sector jobs in the last 12 years.

"No, that won't do because then the Demos would be so far behind, it would make Secretariat at the Belmont look like a photo finish."

Incidentally, I notice that nobody here is defending the absurdity of unskewedpolls.com, which is adjusting all the polls to reflect Rasmussen's party affiliation results and concluding that Romney is leading by an average about high single digits. That doesn't pass the laugh test, but it is the logical conclusion of the argument that the polls are oversampling Democrats. If you reject the conclusion, you should reject the premise as well.

"It's not. Some pollsters are using exit poll party id as their justification for their sampling. The exit poll data for 2010 was nearly the exact opposite of the actual party voter turnout."

How could the exit polls be the opposite of party turnout? Exit polls are our the source of information about actual voters except for the election results themselves. So if you're saying you know the party affiliation of the 2010 electorate, that information had to come from exit polls.

The polls are premised on INCREASED Democratic turnout from 2008 and reduced Republican turnout from 2008.

Neither are remotely valid considerations.

2. Ending 30 years of endless, insipid worship of JF Kennedy.

Missed the photo of young Clinton shaking JFK's hand?

edutcher: The point is that neither 2004 nor 2008 are anomalies.

Yes, 08 was very much an anomaly. Conservatives loathed the guy who won the nomination and didn't come out to vote. The banks crashed and ALL the blame fell on Bush and, therefore, Republicans.

Yes, 08 was a massive anomaly. You are unlikely to have a combo of a candidate conservatives despise AND a financial meltdown occur at the same time.

Now, all polls adjust for demographics (eg, gender, race, etc.). If these demographics are unrealistic, that could bias the polls. The problem is that the polls use a range of demographic assumptions and they all come to the same conclusion: Obama is leading and more peope are identifying as Democrats

Given polls study that exact question of what party do you support and there is evidence as to who is registering where --- no, your conclusion is not valid.

That doesn't pass the laugh test

Republicans taking the House in 2010 didn't pass the "laugh test" --- yet it happened.

No, that won't do because then the Demos would be so far behind, it would make Secretariat at the Belmont look like a photo finish.

Incidentally, I notice that nobody here is defending the absurdity of unskewedpolls.com, which is adjusting all the polls to reflect Rasmussen's party affiliation results and concluding that Romney is leading by an average about high single digits. That doesn't pass the laugh test

Actually, we've all had a look at unskewed and it at least isn't the howler that basing samples on the '08 elections is.

PS Anytime some Lefty uses a line like, "That doesn't pass the laugh test", you know the code has just been broken and they going into last ditch mode to keep from conceding people are onto the current scheme.

It is not about the "over sampling" as such, but the weighting (i.e. adjustment) of the data following, i. e. guessing at how many of those Democrats aree actually going to show up to vote.

The truth is nobody knows at this point, but the pollsters that guessed right are going to be hailed as geniuses on Nov. 7th and following, and those who guessed wrong are going to be denounced as dumbasses.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a global excise tax of up to 70 percent on cigarettes at an upcoming November conference, raising concerns among free market tax policy analysts about fiscal sovereignty and bureaucratic mission creep.

By Jove, Contrariana sounds genuinely miffed at the MSM for insulting her intelligence.

For Noonan not to lay off Romney after her 2008 endorsement of Obama is disgusting.

I have no problem with Romney's speaking style. It's a bit stilted, but he is plainly intelligent and affable, and I think the average swing voter is smart enough not to take points off for his speaking style.

edutcher: What unskewed does is take the actual poll results, increase the percentage of Republicans relative to Democrats by 10-15%, and conclude that Romney is winning even though the actual results of the polls say that Obama is winning. That doesn't pass the laugh test because the methodology is indefensible.

AF said...edutcher: The point is that neither 2004 nor 2008 are anomalies. In both cases, party affiliation as reported in election polls was closely correlated to candidate preference. So to complain that the polls are biased for Obama because they are oversampling Democrats is the same thing as saying they are biased toward Obama because they are picking up too many Obama voters. It's circular.

9/27/12 12:06 PM

The devil in your argument is that as of August there were more registered republicans than democrats. That is why the polls look fishy. I would not trust exit polls too much, those who respond are a self-selcting group, you can't adjust for those who don't respond.

AF - I think that you are starting with some incorrect assumptions. One is about party self-identification. At least Rasmussen and Gallup have Republicans overtaking Democrats in party self-identification, which is a major shift since 2008. And, this seems to agree with changes in party registration over the last 4 years.

To simplify, what the pollsters do is sample the population, and then adjust their numbers. The latter is necessary for a lot of reasons, including that Reps and Dems respond to pollsters differently, on different days of the week, answer land-line phones differently, etc.

So, what they do is weight their sample results, and one of the primary weighting factors is the pollster's model of voting behavior. They start with an assumption of how many R's, D's, and I's there are, and then adjust/weight the results so that that is how many people in each category are effectively sampled.

So, what is critical here is the model that the pollsters are using to party weight their results. Up until now, a lot of them have been using the 2008 election exit polling results. But, there are a lot of reasons to believe that the electorate has shifted a lot over the last 4 years (as partially explained by Flynn). Some that he didn't mention include many people reporting seeing many fewer Obama stickers, the effect of the Tea Party movement, polls showing an Obama win, despite both I's and R's decidedly preferring Romney, a modern record of 8+% unemployment, $5 trillion in additional debut, ObamaCare, 9/11/12 terrorist attacks, etc. Face it - there are a lot of 2008 Obama voters who are having second thoughts about their vote, and I think that a lot of us know a number of them who are embarrassed now about their votes back then. On the flip side, there are likely very, very few 2008 McCain voters who are going to vote for Obama this time around. I know of none, but can name off at least a dozen I know who voted for Obama and are leaning towards voting for Romney this time.

You can believe anything that you want to, but I think that many, if not most here are laughing at your claim that the electorate has moved even more solidly towards the Democrats over the last 4 years.

edutcher: What unskewed does is take the actual poll results, increase the percentage of Republicans relative to Democrats by 10-15%, and conclude that Romney is winning even though the actual results of the polls say that Obama is winning. That doesn't pass the laugh test because the methodology is indefensible.

You don't seem to grasp the fact that Republicans aren't behind in party identification.

edutcher: What unskewed does is take the actual poll results, increase the percentage of Republicans relative to Democrats by 10-15%, and conclude that Romney is winning even though the actual results of the polls say that Obama is winning. That doesn't pass the laugh test because the methodology is indefensible.

Neither does basing samples and weighting on an atypical election.

Morris was on O'Really last night, noting that the percentages of various groups are fairly stable through most elections - '08 being the outlier - yet the pollsters that contend they're just using the last good model when it isn't valid.

So moving everything to the right to account for Lefty bias might not be the best way to compensate, but it gives people a ballpark idea of what the real numbers look like.

That and what Bruce said. Republicans have overtaken Demos for the first time in a long time and that's why we're going through all this FUD.

And, of course, that Choom's policies are crashing around his Dumbo ears.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. If it were the case that the oversampling of Democrats in many polls resulted from weighting to achieve a predetermined number of Democrats in the sample, then I would agree that oversampling is a legitimate problem. However, that is not the case. With the exception of Rasmussen, the major polls do not weight for party affiliation.

For example, Gallup weights for "age, region, gender, education, Hispanic ethnicity, and race." Bloomberg's results are "weighted by race, education, and marital status to reflect the general population based on recent census data." The AP weights for "age, sex, education and race" as well as landline/cellphone use. Etc.

It's not unwise to use Rasmussen or Gallup polling data as they are the most accurate pollsters in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010.

From Wikipedia:

"Rasmussen's overall predictive performance in 2010, however, was poor, including one poll predicting the United States Senate election in Hawaii, 2010 that missed the actual margin between the two candidates by 40 points.

AF's reply directly above is exactly right. No one EXCEPT Rasmussen and some of the really crappy pollsters not included in many of these averages are adjusting by party ID. Ann's peddling of that Breitbart lie should be called what it is: bullshit. Why are you in that industry Ann?

Gallup and Bloomberg have party ID distributions close to Rasmussen's and still show Obama heavily up. They "party ID" canard is brought up in every election, it's only in this one that it's getting so much press. Kerry used it in 2004. McCain used in 2008. The Dems used in 2010. Notice a theme? It's the last refuge of the losers.

If one pronounces that something is so, for example that polling firms are "grotesquely oversampling democrats," then one is presenting the conclusion as one's own judgment. It's not the mere citation of an opinion with a statement of faith in the same, it's a reassertion of the opinion as a judgment of one's own. We shall see whether this is true in a few weeks; but if it it proves not to be, I hope those who thus parroted such opinions as their own will acknowledge having themselves conspired to be used in this way.

When an argument has an obvious flaw, more than one person are going to point it out. Similarly, if my argument has a flaw, please point it out.

Bruce Hayden is the only commenter who actually responded to my points. He suggested that my premise -- ie, that the percentage of Democrats in the non-Rasmussen polls is based on poll results rather than weighting -- was incorrect. But in fact, my premise is correct; no major polls other than Rasmussen weight for party affiliation. And nobody else has even made a coherent argument.

But let's stipulate that it is impossible to know the true D/R/I makeup of polls.

If you are getting high D/low R results, that either means that more people are becoming Democrats and supporting Obama and his lead is accurate, or that the poll is inadvertently skewing and the numbers aren't right.

In that case, we need additional, non-related evidence to know which is true.

Now, if the polls are showing Democrat support as high or higher than the 2008 turnout, then human nature being what it is, that increase will be spread across the nation, including battleground/swing states.

So if Obama's support really has returned to 2008 levels or increased, Obama will have almost all the states he won in 2008 in the bag, and can go on the offensive in states McCain won.

But if there is an inadvertent skew and Romney is actually tied with him or leading, what would we see?

We'd see all the states McCain won in 2008 being safe, we'd see Obama defending states he won in 2008, and we'd see some states that he won safely not being as safe this time around. If things were really bad, we'd see Obama abandoning at least one state he won in 2008 as being a lost cause.

So what is actually happening?

Well, the best/quickest evidence is that Obama has already abandoned North Carolina. He isn't even running ads there. It is supposedly a "toss up" state, but he has already given up there.

He's pumping all his efforts into Virginia, Ohio, and Florida, because Romney probably needs to take all three to win the Presidency.

But Obama won Ohio by 4 points, and Virginia by over 6! If he is worried about losing in a place he carried by 6 percentage points, that is bad for him.

Obama also carried New Hampshire by 9.5, Iowa by 9.3, Nevada by more than 12, Minnesota by 10+, and Michigan by a whopping 16 points...

Now?

Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire are toss-up states. That's a huge loss of support.

Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin are all weakly supporting Obama, or leaning Obama, whichever way you prefer to say it. That's a huge loss of support.

With all those examples of loss of support, how could Obama's support and the number of Democrats have grown or even just stayed the same, to result in these poll skews?

Romney has made as he flips from claiming the ER is socialism that doesn't make sense, to claiming we provide care for the poor without health insurance through ERs, and on it goes, Romney is not tongue-tied just willing to say anything to anybody depending to whom he is speaking.

And, your sentence makes sense? That sentence alone in an essay, when I was taking freshman English in college, would have earned you an F. Obviously, eloquence isn't your bag of bananas.

As expected, edutcher simply dismisses all evidence that he finds inconvenient.

No, but i don't take as fact an opinion piece from a Lefty guru working for a paper that, until a couple of years ago, insisted on calling the country between Iran and Syria Mesopotamia because its editorial policy was that Al Qaeda was not active in Iraq.

Noonan is a hack. She just wants to be on the side of the winner. So if she thinks Obama is up, she'll start singing her progressive blues. If Romney moves up, she's going to act the conservative again.

Sorry, I missed your longer post. It is full of faulty assumptions such as:

(1) If the polls are correct, then Obama should be winning by as much as he won in 2008. Not true. The polls have Obama up by an average of 4 points, according to RealClearPolitics. If the polls are correct, Obama is leading by less than his margin of victory in 2008, which was 7.3%.

(2) If Obama were winning by the same margin as he won in 2008, he would "have almost all the states he won in 2008 in the bag, and can go on the offensive in states McCain won." Mostly untrue. If Obama were winning by a 7% margin, he would still be spending most of his resources contesting the states that he would need to win in order to insure himself the victory, ie, states such as Virginia, Florida, and Ohio. It is true that if he were leading by 7%, we would also see him going on the offensive in a couple more states than we see him doing. But in fact, he is winning by more like 4%, which is consistent with the actions of both campaigns.

(3) The fact that Obama is doing less well in certain states than he did in 2008 shows that the polls are wrong. This is simply incoherent. How can the polls showing Obama doing less well in certain states show that the polls -- which are in many case the same polls -- are wrong? The error here follows from assumption (1) again.

Blah, blah, blah. Look at the statistics and draw your own conclusions. You're just making excuses for ignoring facts you find inconvenient.

Pot, kettle, you know the drill.

Needless to say, I've been louder than anyone here trumpeting the fact the polls are rigged. But, Hell, Diamond can go to HotAir or Ace or Gateway and see the same stuff.

When a ridiculous survey can be shot down by noting an indefensible preponderance of one group or another (hey, I'm a bit skeptical of Ras and is R +4 (probably more like +1 or 2, but he's got the date, I don't)), then it makes all kind of sense.

I can tell anybody who wants to listen, there is no big drumbeat here in NE OH - no lawn signs, no bumper stickers.

But I find it interesting that all this "truthing" happens the day a lot of bad economic data, along with more news the Administration knew the attacks in the Middle East were Al Qaeda from day 1, has come out.

Rasmussen has the candidates locked in a tie. They're 46/46 again today, same as yesterday, and pretty much the same for the past week.

The outcome of the election hinges on certain swing states, not the popular vote. National polls largely consist of voters in populous states that are a lock for one candidate, like Texas, California, and New York. It would be more useful to look at polls of states like Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, and consider how likely Obama or Romney is to win enough of those to get enough electoral votes to win (added onto the states he'll easily win).

"It would be more useful to look at polls of states like Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, and consider how likely Obama or Romney is to win enough of those to get enough electoral votes to win (added onto the states he'll easily win)."

Or Professor Althouse could stop ignoring all but one national poll. Whether you look at the national results or the state results, the only way to conclude that the race is tied is to ignore all the polls that say Obama's winning and focus on the occasional outlier that says the race is tied. Note that there aren't any polls that have Romney leading, either nationally or in pivotal swing states.

Or Professor Althouse could stop ignoring all but one national poll. Whether you look at the national results or the state results, the only way to conclude that the race is tied is to ignore all the polls that say Obama's winning and focus on the occasional outlier that says the race is tied. Note that there aren't any polls that have Romney leading, either nationally or in pivotal swing states.

Sorry, I missed your longer post. It is full of faulty assumptions such as:

(1) If the polls are correct, then Obama should be winning by as much as he won in 2008. Not true. The polls have Obama up by an average of 4 points, according to RealClearPolitics. If the polls are correct, Obama is leading by less than his margin of victory in 2008, which was 7.3%.

(2) If Obama were winning by the same margin as he won in 2008, he would "have almost all the states he won in 2008 in the bag, and can go on the offensive in states McCain won." Mostly untrue. If Obama were winning by a 7% margin, he would still be spending most of his resources contesting the states that he would need to win in order to insure himself the victory, ie, states such as Virginia, Florida, and Ohio. It is true that if he were leading by 7%, we would also see him going on the offensive in a couple more states than we see him doing. But in fact, he is winning by more like 4%, which is consistent with the actions of both campaigns.

(3) The fact that Obama is doing less well in certain states than he did in 2008 shows that the polls are wrong. This is simply incoherent. How can the polls showing Obama doing less well in certain states show that the polls -- which are in many case the same polls -- are wrong? The error here follows from assumption (1) again.

Just you saying something is a faulty assumption doesn't make it a faulty assumption.

Sure, if your assumptions are correct and your assertions are unchallenged, you would be 100% correct.

But although each person is an individual, probability allows us to make assumptions on larger groups based on random sampling of smaller, representative groups.

Your assertion is that Obama is leading based on polls that show more self-identified Dems than in 2008.

That is challenged: 2008 was a wave election, Democrats were energized, Republicans were demoralized, and blacks voted 3 percentage points higher than normal.

Your response is that these polls' higher Dem responses are an indicator of reality: there are actually more Dems intending to vote.

If that were true, would we see a closer race or more of a blowout?

If Dem self-identification were increased over 2008, which is what you are insisting is the case, then Obama would have a greater lead, and would be playing offense in Romney's states.

Instead, Obama is playing defense in states that should be solid Obama, is playing really strong defense in battle ground states he won easily last time around, and has even abandoned one battleground state as a lost cause.

There is simply no way that Democratic self-identification can be +7 or higher without Obama leading in a landslide and all so-called battleground states being moderate Obama.

So go ahead and dismiss my points with your background evidence being solely based on the fact that you dismiss my points.

No, as usual Diamond, moron that he is, has to get nasty when he doesn't get his way.

I quote from the post, "These polls are grotesquely oversampling Democrats, to the point where the joke has become obvious". Clearly, Ann's contention the polls are a crock and anyone is free to defend or criticize that contention. He said, "look at the statistics", and I have and pointed up corroborating points of view on other blogs, as well as citing specific skews by specific polls. He wants anyone he accuses of "ignoring facts" to give up and go home.

Ain't happenin'.

Diamond is another one of those Lefties that has a hissy fit when somebody dares disagree and goes into his Bob Beckel impersonation. Apparently, we can't listen to Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Jerome Corsi, or Ann Coulter, but Ned Silver's word is inviolate.

Yeah, this was so poor:In the January 2010 special election for the Senate seat from Massachusetts, Rasmussen Reports was the first to show that Republican Scott Brown had a chance to defeat Martha Coakley. Just after Brown's upset win, Ben Smith at Politico reported, “The overwhelming conventional wisdom in both parties until a Rasmussen poll showed the race in single digits in early January was that Martha Coakley was a lock. (It's hard to recall a single poll changing the mood of a race quite that dramatically.)"

But wait...what is the "objective source" claiming Rasumussen performed poorly in 2010?

Oh, yeah:Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight

Yes, let's trust someone who has a vested interest in tearing down his competition to be meticulously objective. /sarc

The joke is on Peggy noonan if she thinks anyone buys her "conservative" act. Maybe libs can get away with pretending to buy the fakery but the gig is up for all conservatives, and frankly for many libs. She is, yet another, in the mainstream media that's on board to turn objective media into Pravda for Obama. To the point where as soon as she opens her mouth I assume she's lying.

But for her so called conservative bonafides, why does she still have a job?

Nathan Alexander: "Your assertion is that Obama is leading based on polls that show more self-identified Dems than in 2008."

Actually, that isn't my assertion. My assertion is that he is leading based on all the polls.

Your argument is that (1) the polls showing Obama leading show more self-identified Democrats than in 2008 (2) it can't possibly be true that there are more self-identified Democrats than in 2008, (3) therefore Obama is not leading.

Both of your premises are faulty and in any event your conclusion does not follow from them.

Or Professor Althouse could stop ignoring all but one national poll. Whether you look at the national results or the state results, the only way to conclude that the race is tied is to ignore all the polls that say Obama's winning and focus on the occasional outlier that says the race is tied

This coming from the person who was puffing out his chest about Gallup not weighting for party ID.

From Wikipedia: "In December 2009, Alan Abramowitz wrote that if Rasmussen's data was accurate, Republicans would gain 62 seats in the House during the 2010 midterm elections. In a column written the week before...the 2010 midterm elections, Rasmussen stated his belief that Republicans would gain at least 55 seats in the House and end up with 48 or 49 Senate seats. Republicans ended up gaining 63 seats in the House, and coming away with 47 Senate seats.

Jay: "CBS, Washington Post, PPP, Q, et all all weight for party affiliation."

Not true. "We do not weight for party ID," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which is conducting battleground state polls along with CBS News and the New York Times. "We do not predetermine how many Democrats, Republicans and independents will be in our sample."

The reason, he says, is that "party ID is a changing statistic. People will over time change back and forth in terms of how they view themselves politically."

I said my view is based on all the polls. That's one poll. It has Obama up by 10 points, so it's not surprising it has more Dems than Rs. My guess would be that the the average of recent Ohio polls, Obama +5.3 points, is where the race is really at. And that's exactly my point: go with the average rather than the outliers, in either direction.

Jay: "You don't have the foggiest understanding about polling or this topic. Why don't you just shut up?"

"It appears even Fox News is in on the scam. They have Obama up 5 pts today."

With a Dem +3 sample (+5 among registered voters). So once again, we have the D/R numbers essentially identical to the Obama/Romney numbers. Thus, saying Ds are oversampled is tantamount to saying that Obama voters are oversampled. In other words, the "D oversampling" argument boils down to this: "The polls saying Obama is leading are biased because they say Obama is leading."

I'm not surprised that the likes of Jay, edutcher, etc. are buying this. But I am surprised that Althouse is. Even Erick Ericksen says that "I do not believe there is some intentional, orchestrated campaign to suppress the GOP vote by showing Mitt Romney losing. I actually believe that Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama."

When Althouse finds herself on the crazy side of Erick Ericksen, something is amiss. My hypothesis is innumeracy, but maybe something else is going on.

Even Erick Ericksen says that "I do not believe there is some intentional, orchestrated campaign to suppress the GOP vote by showing Mitt Romney losing. I actually believe that Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama."

Ericksen then goes on to say:

I’ll concede that Barack Obama is ahead, but I will not concede he is ahead by as much as some polls are showing. This is an incredibly close race.

I've spoken to you about this before, AF. For your own sake, don't provide links that refute themselves.

Since Jay is merrily making an ass of himself (again!) in this thread, I'm pleased to remind everyone that Jay insists that women can only become pregnant upon the completion of a pregnancy test. Yes, that's right, Jay believes that life begins with a pregnancy test!

Dumb Jay hasn't explained yet how women became pregnant before the invention of such tests. I'm sure he has a secret theory, though.

Even Erick Ericksen says that "I do not believe there is some intentional, orchestrated campaign to suppress the GOP vote by showing Mitt Romney losing. I actually believe that Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama."

Whoopee!!!

Ericksen is a Libertarian blowhard more interested in seeing people he doesn't like lose than seeing Zero defeated.

His big rap during the primaries was making sure Sarah Palin didn't run. I don't doubt for an instant he's climaxing at the thought the Romster might be behind.

Anybody using him as an indication that Conservative opinion is seeing it the Lefties' way is on a short leash.

The link doesn't come close to refuting my point. I agree with Ericksen that the race is closer than the recent NYT/CBS and Washington Post swing-state polls suggest. I also agree that the race is close, though probably not "incredibly close."

The argument being made by Althouse and others is much stronger than this. The argument is that the race is tied and that the polls other than Rasmussen are intentionally biased in their results. As the quote from Ericksen makes clear, he doesn't buy that.

It's hilarious that edutcher thinks that qualifies as a rebuttal. Then again, edutcher's ability to reason is so poorly developed that the Fishersville Mike gibberish probably DOES qualify as a rebuttal in his mind. Pathetic.

In other words, AF and diamond do what they accuse everyone else of doing - dismissing their arguments out of hand.

For Diamond in particular to accuse anyone of poor reasoning is like my dog Sherlock going after a Kodiak bear.

Fact is, that's just what the Fishersville piece does, but any blogger who doesn't agree with the Lefty talking points has to get the Uncle Saul treatment.

These 2 are the last ditch, Diamond is even quoting shilol (lol, as they say). Once people started talking about the skew in the polls, the jig was up and somebody had to be the sacrificial goats to try to rebut it.

I never understood letting Zakaria back in. Everything in that article is rehashing things that have been said by other, non-plagiarists. Non-plagiarists who are as smart and capable as Zakaria who are now denied work because, I guess, he's too valuable to require ethics from.

Its funny to see teh house trolls show up day after day regurgitating the same "Romney's doomed" crap. If even my liberal pals in the bay area are asking for relief from the jug eared jesus you know he's going to get his ass kicked in November. What good news or even positive news can he point to for re-electing his sorry ass? Its really that simple. The diversity hire is not up to the job, he's got to go. A simple majority will do the firing quietly, in the privacy of a voting booth. You can bank on it.

Jake Diamond said... Since Jay is merrily making an ass of himself (again!) in this thread, I'm pleased to remind everyone that Jay insists that women can only become pregnant upon the completion of a pregnancy test. Yes, that's right, Jay believes that life begins with a pregnancy test!

Do you get a boner and drool when you type such silly, untrue shit about me or what?

In other words, the way Quinnipiac does it is they assume that the thousand or so people they poll on a certain day really do represent the population, and if that comes out with a D+8 distribution, that’s the way they report it.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Pentagon reporters that U.S. forces were on a heightened state of alert already because of the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by al Qaeda. nytaxpreparation.net